Gitman Bros. is one of the oldest shirt companies still producing in America with a history that begins in 1932. Today, Gitman Bros. Vintage pulls from its archives and multi-generational experience to create the best fitting shirts on the market with a flair for the patterns and colors of its long history.
During the Great Depression, Brooklyn born shirt-maker Max Gitman left New York to escape the cities rising costs and criminal extortion in an already difficult market. In 1932, he established the Ashland Shirt & Pajama Company in Ashland, Pennsylvania - training a new workforce in the same factory that Gitman Bros. uses today.
With the advent of WWII, the Ashland Shirt Company won a government contract to produce shirting for the military. Their precision-made, reliable and comfortable shirts solidified the company’s prestige and before long, the rural, coal-mining town became a hotbed for gold-standard shirt-making.
In 1950, Max Gitman’s twin sons, Alfie and Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Gitman joined the business. Over the next two decades, they became revered veterans in the industry, overseeing production for scores of private labels. In 1978, the company was renamed Gitman Bros. and added a specialty line of sports shirts under their own name.
Still championing the company’s philosophy and meticulous manufacturing, Gitman shirts were popular for their fit and specialty details in a range of new and exciting fabrics - bright plaids, vibrant patterns and unique prints. These lively prints and high-textured fabrics were eventually quelled in favor of focusing on perfect dress shirts at boutique gentlemen stores.
In 2008, Gitman’s creative director, Chris Olberding, discovered archived line books and was wowed by the wealth of vibrant and unique textiles. Gitman Bros. Vintage was thus created to bridge the old and new with the same devotion to American quality and craftsmanship as ever. Gitman Vintage features a slightly modernized/balanced fit with a higher armhole, slim sleeve and a tailored silhouette. Most shirts still feature all the finishing details specified by the twins in ‘78.
With nearly a century of American gold-standard shirt-making, Gitman Vintage brings back those collector favorites.
